Throughput enhancement by exploiting spatial reuse opportunities with smart antenna systems in wireless ad hoc networks

Smart antenna (or multi-beam antenna) systems can support simultaneous transmissions (or receptions) of multiple packets in different beams using the same channel. However, network performance is highly dependent on transmission scheduling. This study develops two transmission-scheduling schemes for use with smart antenna systems to improve network throughput and reduce transmission delay. The proposed scheduling mechanisms, which are designed to minimize the average latency and maximize network throughput, exploit the opportunities for parallel transmissions and consider communication restrictions and packet sizes. The performance results indicate that the proposed schemes outperform previous schemes in network throughput and transmission delay.